A solemn, sometimes-sketchy family excavation.
Why did Laura Smith’s mother, Viola Umberto Wilkins, vanish from her 12-year-old daughter’s life? Thirty years later, in search of an explanation, Laura begins to uncover Viola’s complicated, tragic past.
It’s more about the journey than the arrival in Morris’ latest, a somber account of three generations of women, with a focus on abandonment. Laura has spent decades wondering about various explanations for her mother’s disappearance and dealing with the associated pain of unknowing. Now, at 42—the same age Viola was when she left—and for vague reasons, she sets about tracing her mother’s history, traveling to Brindisi, Italy, where the family lived till Laura was 6, when they moved to New Jersey. The Italian Viola had met Laura’s father, a U.S. serviceman, near Naples during World War II, and Laura believed that was where Viola’s roots were. But in Italy, she is able to locate a building called the Red House, the repeated subject of Viola’s paintings, and this discovery, plus conversations with an old man, Tommaso Bassano, reveal startling facts. Viola was Jewish—not Catholic, as Laura thought—and she, her parents, and brother Rudy were displaced from Turin and imprisoned with other Jews at the Red House in 1942, swept up in the violent antisemitic segregation of the era. Now the narrative switches—sometimes confusingly—between Viola’s and Laura’s perspectives. Viola catches the eye of young Italian soldier Tommaso, who loves her and tries to help the starving Jews. As the novel’s historical dimension intensifies, embracing Viola’s parents’ stories, too, its mood darkens and it becomes an ever-harsher consideration of survival. Laura’s pilgrimage to Italy helps her heal and understand her mother better, but other facets of the story remain unresolved. It’s a melancholy spiral of a narrative, at times slack and repetitive and with loose ends, but the unusual historical aspect lends gravitas.
A solemn, sometimes-sketchy family excavation.Pub Date: May 13, 2025
ISBN: 9780385544986
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: March 8, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2025
Uneven but fitfully amusing.
Betrayed by her husband, a severely depressed young woman gets drawn into the over-the-top festivities at a lavish wedding.
Phoebe Stone, who teaches English literature at a St. Louis college, is plotting her own demise. Her husband, Matt, has left her for another woman, and Phoebe is taking it hard. Indeed, she's determined just where and how she will end it all: at an oceanfront hotel in Newport, where she will lie on a king-sized canopy bed and take a bottle of her cat’s painkillers. At the hotel, Phoebe meets bride-to-be Lila, a headstrong rich girl presiding over her own extravagant six-day wedding celebration. Lila thought she had booked every room in the hotel, and learning of Phoebe's suicidal intentions, she forbids this stray guest from disrupting the nuptials: “No. You definitely can’t kill yourself. This is my wedding week.” After the punchy opening, a grim flashback to the meltdown of Phoebe's marriage temporarily darkens the mood, but things pick up when spoiled Lila interrupts Phoebe's preparations and sweeps her up in the wedding juggernaut. The slide from earnest drama to broad farce is somewhat jarring, but from this point on, Espach crafts an enjoyable—if overstuffed—comedy of manners. When the original maid of honor drops out, Phoebe is persuaded, against her better judgment, to take her place. There’s some fun to be had here: The wedding party—including groom-to-be Gary, a widower, and his 11-year-old daughter—takes surfing lessons; the women in the group have a session with a Sex Woman. But it all goes on too long, and the humor can seem forced, reaching a low point when someone has sex with the vintage wedding car (you don’t want to know the details). Later, when two characters have a meet-cute in a hot tub, readers will guess exactly how the marriage plot resolves.
Uneven but fitfully amusing.Pub Date: July 30, 2024
ISBN: 9781250899576
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.
Coelho is a Brazilian writer with four books to his credit. Following Diary of a Magus (1992—not reviewed) came this book, published in Brazil in 1988: it's an interdenominational, transcendental, inspirational fable—in other words, a bag of wind.
The story is about a youth empowered to follow his dream. Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd boy who learns through a dream of a treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. An old man, the king of Salem, the first of various spiritual guides, tells the boy that he has discovered his destiny: "to realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation." So Santiago sells his sheep, sails to Tangier, is tricked out of his money, regains it through hard work, crosses the desert with a caravan, stops at an oasis long enough to fall in love, escapes from warring tribesmen by performing a miracle, reaches the pyramids, and eventually gets both the gold and the girl. Along the way he meets an Englishman who describes the Soul of the World; the desert woman Fatima, who teaches him the Language of the World; and an alchemist who says, "Listen to your heart" A message clings like ivy to every encounter; everyone, but everyone, has to put in their two cents' worth, from the crystal merchant to the camel driver ("concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man"). The absence of characterization and overall blandness suggest authorship by a committee of self-improvement pundits—a far cry from Saint- Exupery's The Little Prince: that flagship of the genre was a genuine charmer because it clearly derived from a quirky, individual sensibility.
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.Pub Date: July 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-06-250217-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1993
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
